P-I archive: A classic Seattle building that’s still downtown

A seattlepi.com archive photo of what was then the Northwestern Mutual Insurance Building at 217 Pine St. See a larger version of the photo here.

Today from the seattlepi.com archive we share a photo of the historic Olympic Tower in downtown Seattle.

The 12-story tower – on the National Register of Historic Places – was first known as the United Shopping Tower and later as the Northwestern Mutual Insurance Building and Olympic Savings Tower.

The photo above from the from the P-I archives has one date on the back – Sept. 16, 1937 – although I suspect it was taken before that. See a larger version of the archive photo here.

A good history of the building, which at one point housed the predecessor to KIRO radio, can be found here. The building is now part commercial use and condominiums.

Here’s more from the building’s National Register of Historic Places entry:

Completed in 1928, the Northern Life Tower–a true skyscraper–represents a dramatic shift in the appearance of Seattle’s skyline. Earlier 20th-century buildings had derived their style from classical precedents. But by the 1920s, architects began to favor designs that attempted to emulate the speed, efficiency and power found within technology, perceived by many as humanity’s hope for the future.

The Northern Life Tower was the first building in Seattle to illustrate this style, now known as Art Deco or Art Moderne. Derived from Eliel Saarinen’s famous, second-place proposal for the Chicago Tribune contest, the Northern Life Tower building beautifully illustrates the increasing popularity of a simple, smooth, almost machine-like exterior.

This faith in progress also appeared in the lighting that once fully illuminated the building: more than 200 floodlights faded into one another in a “phantasmagoric display” meant to imitate the aurora borealis, a play on the Northern Life Insurance Company’s name and an illustration of the belief that science could imitate nature’s most incredible wonders.

Today the lights are gone, and taller, newer skyscrapers dwarf the building, but it remains one of the Northwest’s most elegant Art-Deco buildings.

A similar recent view from the area is below. The building is at 217 Pine St., on the southwest corner of Third and Pine.

Be sure to check back tomorrow for another item from the seattlepi.com archive. Thanks to Jeannette Voiland of the Seattle Public Library for help pointing me in the right direction for this post.